\u201cMy dog usually does that when someone has a heart issue. You might wanna get checked out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Katie was on a flight<\/a> when she noticed the dog next to her wouldn\u2019t stop pawing<\/a> at her and whining. The woman sitting with the medical alert dog<\/a> finally said something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOkay, this is gonna sound strange, but my dog usually does that when someone has a heart issue. You might wanna get checked out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Katie<\/a> (@Uniquekatie02<\/a>) laughed it off at the time, according to what she shared on X<\/a> on May 13. But months later, during a routine checkup, she mentioned the incident to her doctor. They ran some tests and found a mildly irregular heartbeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The dog was right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Medical alert dogs are trained to detect physiological changes in people, and science backs up what sounds almost supernatural. A 2021 study published in PLOS One surveyed 61 people with medical alert dogs and found that the dogs alerted them to 33 different medical conditions. Eighty-four percent of owners reported that their dogs alerted them to multiple conditions, and 54% said their dogs alerted them to multiple people, not just their owner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The dogs detect these changes through scent. Research published in Scientific Reports<\/a> documented that seizures have a specific scent that dogs can pick up through human sweat and other fluids. Craig Angle, co-director of the Canine Performance Sciences Program at Auburn University\u2019s College of Veterinary Medicine<\/a>, told Scientific American<\/a> that dogs are essentially \u201cnatural biosensors, preprogrammed with 30,000 years of evolutionary algorithms, and 300 million sensory receptors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A dog\u2019s brain, he said, is designed to detect chemical information at thresholds much lower than most medical machines can manage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For cardiac alert dogs specifically, they\u2019re trained to recognize changes in heart rate and blood pressure. When they detect something off, they alert through behaviors like pawing, nudging, or lying down. Some will bump their owner with their head repeatedly until they respond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The internet had thoughts about Katie\u2019s experience. One person wrote, \u201cMedical alert dogs are honestly terrifyingly impressive. Imagine getting diagnosed by a Labrador at 30,000 feet before your doctor caught it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another joked about a future where dogs handle group health screenings: \u201cDogs meet up once a month, and we schedule a couple of people per minute. They walk to every dog, stopping for a few seconds to see if they alert. I am a genius, right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n